CHART OF THE DAY: Now This Is A Misery Index

Remember the Misery Index? It adds together unemployment and inflation to get a quick and dirty measure of, well, misery. But by this measure, since we’re in deflation, the current recession doesn’t look so bad.

So HuffingtonPost came up with its index, which uses the broader measure of unemployment (U6), along with a more narrow basket of prices on essential goods, adding in other things like food stamps and and credit card delinquencies. We think HuffPo’s does a much better job of capturing the current misery than the old one.

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